Water restrictions to continue in South African City of Cape Town

The residents of South African city, Cape Town, have been restricted to 50 litres of water per person per day till the end of August following the Level 6B restrictions announced by the Department of Water and Sanitation.

According to Rashid Khan, The Regional head of the Department of Water and Sanitation, the restriction on water usage will remain in place despite Western Cape supply dams showing positive signs of filling up.

He noted that, the dam levels have not hit the 85 percent cap gazetted in October 2017 and January 2018 to warrant the relaxation of the restriction. The restrictions will remain in place for Cape Town and surrounding towns, as well as for agriculture.

According to Khan, the rainfall trends for that season did not show that they had received above the average amounts cumulatively, however, over the past weeks the storage system’s recovered.

Khan authorized the national Department together with all sectors that use the Western Cape Water Supply System, to hold another high-level meeting to reassess the situation at the end of August.

He said the current restrictions of water will remain in place until the following meeting with the users of water in August. The trend of the rainfall up to that date will show an increase or decrease in the management of the restrictions of water.

Worst drought in a century
The combined level of the Cape Supply dams have increase to 55.8 percent, compared to the previous week’s 53.05 percent. Last week, Theewaterskloof dam – the largest Cape Supply system – was 41.2 percent full compared to the same time last year which was 20.3 percent .

South African water experts said that, in order to recover from three years of drought – the worst in 100 years, the region in cape Town will need at least one rainy season of average above the rainfall, but preferably two.